The Revocatorio Vote, and Prospects for Change

Finally, the Vote

Bolivia’s first-ever national recall referendum took place Sunday, and it was not quite the revolutionary event that two months of constitutional controversy, accusations of illegality, political shuffling, international concerns, regional violence, protests, hunger strikes, and coup fears indicated it would be. Tensions remained high through the weekend, but there were no more incidents of major violence.

However, in the days before the vote, President Evo Morales was prevented from visiting 5 different cities by politician-organized mobilizations to take over the airports where he was to land. Opposition sectors in the media luna departments are so hostile to the President’s policies that he effectively could not travel in half of the entire country where he is president. Evo and his ministers denounced what they called “civic dictatorships,” run by rightist youth groups and conservative civic committees, which are carrying on the legacy of the military dictators of the 60s and 70s.

The day of the vote was a relatively calm one in Bolivia. There were some attempts by right-wing student groups in Santa Cruz to intimidate voters, but the police took their weapons without any major incidents. Here in La Paz, the city was quieter than I could have imagined. “Parece al campo,” one man said. With only official vehicles allowed to operate, with alcohol, weapons, and demonstrations prohibited, and with virtually all businesses closed, the normally bustling city did seem like the countryside.

Polling places were located in neighborhood schools, and all of the sites that I visited were relaxed and tranquil, with police posted outside and kids playing inside while their parents voted. The day seemed more like a holiday than the date of a hotly contested election. The government followed through on its promise of tranquility and security, and the Bolivian voters apparently acknowledged Evo´s request for the vote to be a “fiesta democratica.” Of Bolivia’s 4.1 million person electorate (out of a very young population of 10 million), more than 80% of eligible citizens turned out to vote.


Winners and Losers

As nearly every story has reported it, the vote results made everyone winners and everyone losers. Margins of victory or defeat were large enough that the contested interpretation of percentage results is unlikely to even be an issue, despite the controversy of the past weeks. Predictions of winners and losers were basically accurate.

Three prefects were revoked; the opposition governor of La Paz department, the MAS governor of Evo stronghold Oruro, and governor Manfred Reyes Villa of Cochabamba. Reyes Villa, who has been perhaps Evo´s greatest political enemy, originally proposed a recall back in November 2007. Nonetheless, when the Congress finally approved the President’s version, he called it unconstitutional and refused to participate. The Cochabamba prefect was overwhelmingly voted out of office, but says he will continue his job. It remains to be seen if and how the government will remove the stubborn Reyes Villa, and what conflict this attempt might ignite.

The reason everyone who is a winner is also a loser is that all the important political players in Bolivia were confirmed. Every media luna prefect was ratified with well over 50% of the vote, with Santa Cruz’s Ruben Costas receiving over 70%. Each media luna governor won a much higher percentage in the revocatorio than in their original election bids, and in general support was higher for the autonomy advocates on August 10 than it was for the autonomy votes of the past 3 months. So, it seems that each opposition prefect has had his individual position strengthened, while the media luna as a whole will view the results as a mandate for pushing forward their autonomy initiatives. This result, the opposite of what Evo and MAS had hoped for, makes the President’s own victory bittersweet.

Evo did win, and big. Exact counts are not in, but Evo´s margin of victory is reported to be around 65%. This is at least 10 percentage points higher than his original victory margin of 54%, which was an unprecedented electoral mandate two and a half years ago. Two factors make the President’s August 10 percentage particularly impressive. The first is that, while Evo predictably received the majority of his support in the mostly poor and indigenous western highlands, he had solid “Yes” majorities in most departments and had respectable support even in the media luna. Secondly, this 65% (or whatever it ends up being) is essentially a concrete approval rating that amounts to around a TWO THIRDS nation-wide majority in favor of the President’s policies and agenda. In such a divided country, this level of support is astronomical.


Can Bolivia Move Forward

Now, the questions facing Bolivia is: with both sides thoroughly strengthened after a bitter campaign season, what can possibly change? Neither the President nor the prefects were able to weaken their opponent, as each had hoped. Instead, they have consolidated their bases of support around the very issues that have driven Bolivia’s political and regional polarization. In his victory speech, Santa Cruz’s Costas chanted for Autonomy and declared “Out with foreign monkeys!”, referring to Evo, whom he also called a dictator. The mayor of Santa Cruz declared that the President had not learned how to govern, and “asked” the Armed Forces to overthrow him. Other victorious prefects were less inflammatory in their victory celebrations, but still hammered away against the central government in their pro-autonomy speeches.

I attended Evo´s victory rally in the Plaza Murillo, where flag and banner-waving crowds chanted their support for the President and listened to him speak from the Presidential Palace balcony. He highlighted the democratic achievement of the vote, which was unexpectedly successful for a Bolivian political process. He thanked all the voters, and stated his respect for his victorious opponents. He spoke strongly of the ratification of his government’s process of change, and especially the need to continue with the nationalization of natural resources. Perhaps most importantly, he spoke of the need to initiate a political dialogue, with the end result of instituting the new political constitution (C.P.E) in the near future, to the benefit of all Bolivians.

The President has reiterated his call for dialogue, which I interpret to mean a gradual process of compromise. He stated his intention to integrate the media luna autonomy statutes, which the government has rejected as illegal, into the new national constitution. While this sounds and seems like what needs to happen, this goal may not be realistic. While Evo emphasized that his first priority is ending extreme poverty in the country (an ideal which no-one can oppose), he made clear that the means for doing this were founded on the recovery of Bolivia’s natural resources. This puts him directly at odds with the eastern prefects, who have made clear that they oppose state control of resource revenues, even if they are being used to fund programs to alleviate poverty.

As I have outlined before, each side has at their back an argument for why the other side should compromise. Because the revocatorio failed to break the stalemate, dialogue may be inevitable. The media luna departments cannot follow through on their autonomy statues without government concession of some type, while Evo cannot effectively execute his land reform and resource nationalization programs without regional cooperation at some level. To achieve a progressive compromise, both sides would have to be efficient and reasonable in their negotiations. As I have noted again and again, however, Bolivian politics are not conducive to tolerance or compromise. Opposition leaders rally support around the issues of most symbolic importance to their voters, unafraid to manipulate racist prejudice and economic-self interest for political gain, while the government’s supporters are seeking policies that they view as essential for themselves and for Bolivia’s future. There is no aspect of either side’s platform that is not considered or represented as “essential.”

It may be more likely that another referendum follows a lack of dialogue. Next year could see, as some ministers have suggested, a national referendum on the controversial issues in the new constitution: regional autonomies, land reform, re-election. This type of referendum would surely polarize Bolivian politics even further, centered as it is on the issues that have been most divisive. If a new attempt at dialogue and compromise fails, however, we should expect Bolivia’s leaders to return to what they know: secessionist hardball of the most polarizing type, conducted without concern for country’s long-term welfare, and populist outcries against subversive neoliberals.

As always, predictions in Bolivia have little value. We will have to wait and see whether politics here are entering a new phase, or whether the cycle of social and political polarization is as self-perpetuating as my research has indicated. I hope that my diligent blog readers will now consider themselves knowledgeable on the subject of Bolivian politics, the people and events that drive developments, the strategies and issues that mobilize support, the factors and circumstances that facilitate polarization, and the political, cultural, and geographical diversity of this country. I know that I have learned more than I could have imagined.

This post concludes my study of political developments and patterns here, though I will offer a summarizing account of personal experiences, impressions, and reflections on my time in Bolivia.

History, the Revocatorio, and a political climax in Bolivia

Living in the Historical Present

I am back in La Paz for my final week, after several weeks of being in and out of Bolivia. After Paraguay, I spent a week in Peru being a tourist. The city of Cuzco is beautiful, if crowded with tourists, and evokes colonial Spain as well as the lost majesty of the Incan empire centered there. In visits to the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and to the awe-inspiring ruins of Macchu Picchu, it was impossible not to feel wonder and respect for the ancient cultures that flourished all over South America, as well as regret that they were so completely obliterated by the Spanish conquest and colonialization that transformed the course of history on this continent.

Again and again, I have felt a strong sense that the political atmosphere and developments of contemporary Latin America, and Bolivia in particular, represent the culmination of an era of history that has seen cycles of oppressive, exploitative, and violent governments and societies that operated without any consideration for the people who called this place home for millennia before Europe imposed its religious, economic, and social structures on this hemisphere. The past decades, and especially the past few years, have revealed that this cycle has taken on a new character, a potential break with these long-established social norms.

History here is not something to be studied as a subject. It remains unresolved, and its processes and legacies are defining the conflicted and dynamic present in Bolivia as well as elsewhere in South America. In Peru, which has a similar ethnic composition to Bolivia, the richness of the pre-Colombian cultures has been celebrated as a point of national pride for much longer than in Bolivia (thanks in no small part to the tourism industry). Only recently, here, have social movements representing indigenous cultural pride taken on a political role and demanded to be part of the national identity.

Evo Morales remains the symbol of this transformation, and his political party MAS claims to be the political instrument of the social, worker, and indigenous movements. The “cultural revolution” that accompanies their “democratic revolution” really is changing the social and political landscape of Bolivia. It is these very tangible and visible changes, which are re-defining the nature of politics and society, which have brought such fierce resistance in the form of the capital plena and autonomy movements. As a editorial I read today put it, everyone was willing to accept an Indian president as a sign of progress in the country, as long as he didn’t change anything. Well, he is changing things; the entire system of institutions and processes that govern the country, in fact.

Revocatorio Shuffle

As expected, the lead-up to the Revocatorio has not proceeded simply. Increasingly sharp polarization has characterized the political atmosphere of the past weeks in Bolivia. In an attempt to reach a compromise that would allow the vote to proceed with minimal controversy, the National Electoral Court (CNE) proposed a change to the voting rules. Constitutionally, only the Congress can legislate a change to the law that instituted the recall referendum. However, the CNE, joined by 7 of the 9 departmental courts, made a somewhat iffy claim for legality by saying that it was only clarifying the technicalities of vote interpretation, rather than altering the text of the law.

The court declared that a 50% +1 majority would be necessary to remove the departmental prefects from office, contrary to the original scheme, which required only a “No” percentage greater than their original election mandate. The decision, interpreted by many as a cave-in to the opposition-laden departmental courts, is sympathetic to criticisms that the original percentage rules favored President Morales and Vice President Garcia Linares, who still require a “No” vote greater than their 54% electoral mandate to be removed.

It remains uncertain whether the CNE´s decision will be implemented, but the government has hinted it might accept the new interpretation rules. The constitutional ambiguity and lack of legal clarity is certain to make the vote, and the interpretation of the results, tumultuous at best.

Meanwhile, the lone judge on the Constitutional Tribunal issued another call for suspending the vote until its constitutionality can be determined. This was in response to a claim submitted by the Cochabamba Prefect, Manfred Reyes Villa, who has remained the most vocal critic of the referendum and still refuses to participate. This, following the judge´s first declaration, is the latest of what Evo´s Vice President has called “an anti-democratic soap opera,” orchestrated by the opposition and the oligarchic media.

This “telenovela antidemocratica” began with criticisms of the law establishing the vote (which was approved by a bipartisan majority) and continued with questions about the National Electoral Court´s capabilities. The discovery of ID voter card fraud became a spectacle in the press, where headlines questioning the legitimacy of newly registered voters dominated newspapers for more than a week. The voter fraud, drastically overstated by the reports, is unlikely to have any impact whatsoever on the vote results, but the sensationalized headlines give a different impression.

In fact, newspaper headlines are one of the single greatest sources of misinformation and over-generalization, because most people here just glance at the front page of the papers sitting on the newsstands, and interpret the news accordingly. From my observation of newspaper headlines and story patterns, there does seem to be a steady push to put in doubt the institutions, processes, and political players involved in the referendum. Evo, of course, answers all this by saying that his critics are afraid of democracy, and afraid of the Bolivian citizens.

Rising Tensions and Violence

August 6, Bolivia´s Independence Day, provided a stark picture of the national political scene. In the face of opposition-organized protests and security concerns, Evo was forced to cancel the traditional Presidential visit to Sucre to participate in the constitutional ceremony. Instead, the conservative opposition celebrated in Sucre, behind threats of violent demonstration, while Evo spoke during proceedings in La Paz. He highlighted economic progress during his 2 ½ years in office, noting that during his presidency Bolivia has eliminated its fiscal deficit, generated a budget surplus, multiplied export revenues, increased resource redistribution to regions, municipalities, and universities, and established itself as a sovereign nation with dignity and credibility in the international community. All of his points are supported by economic statistics and analysis I have seen.

Bolivians seem not to be wavering in their support of the indigenous president, as the press here has been suggesting for weeks. International polling institutions recently showed Evo´s approval rating at 59%, one of the highest in Latin America. So, it seems that Evo will win, and win well, in the recall vote, but also that his support will regionally limited. Most expect him to get high “No” percentages in the media luna, while receiving an overwhelming vote of support in the western altiplano departments. While Evo hopes to use his renewed mandate to secure his constitutional reforms, the autonomy seekers are most likely going to dig their heels in even further. Absent an unexpected power shift or collapse, the revocatorio results are probably only going to further polarize and alienate the Bolivian population between the opposing factions, as the campaigns and controversies leading up to the vote already have.

Another well-publicized case of violence took place in the media luna region of Tarija. Protesters (from rightist youth groups) there attempted to take over an airport, preventing Venezuela´s Hugo Chavez and Argentina´s Fernandez de Kirchner from attending a planned energy policy meeting with Morales. Both leaders cancelled their trips because of security concerns. The President of Tarija´s Civic Committee, one of the groups spearheading the autonomy efforts, declared that “protests (aka violence and threats) would continue so that the President never sets foot on Tarijeño soil.” It is ironic that this is coming from the regions who claim to be neglected and ignored by the central government. I might also add that the protestors explained that they wouldn’t permit the meeting to occur because they considered the act to be “just political.” People are so easily inflamed in their “passion for democracy”, violence has become accepted by some as a just response to political maneuvering. As Bolivia´s recent history shows, political violence is especially explosive at pivotal moments, such as national votes. The Police and Armed Forces, however, have guaranteed that Sunday´s vote will proceed securely.

Meanwhile, miners involved in a typical protest bloqueo of a major road had a violent confrontation with police. Two died, and several were wounded. Headlines declared that a shadow was cast over the Morales government on Independence Day. More roadblocks, strikes, and protests are likely in the coming days, but whether they will escalate into violence remains to be seen.

In other news, Prefects and Civic Committee officials from several media luna departments are on a hunger strike. They are protesting the revocatorio, and also demanding the return of the IDH (Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons) revenues that are funding the new national pension (discussed in the last post). It strikes me as ironic that some of the most affluent people in Bolivia are going hungry by choice to demand the return of funds that are being used to help keep the poorest and oldest Bolivians from going hungry in poverty.

August on Fire

The vote date of August 10 marches closer, with no sign of peaceful resolution or lowering tensions before or after. Political propaganda and advertisements are ubiquitous. Television commercials show ballot boxes being checked “Yes” or “No” for the President and prefects, with sound bites and images supporting the respective choices. Political graffiti is everywhere, to the same effect.

Neither side is willing to compromise. The autonomy advocates, should they remain in office, will claim the people´s support and the principle of democracy in pushing for more independence and resource control. They have economic strength, well-connected information engines, and resource richness on their side. Also, the autonomy departments have the (mostly covert) support of the United States. Along with anti-narcotics funding, the largest amount of US diplomatic aid goes to “regional development,” which translates into funding for the prefects and civic committees of the media luna. The US, with its pro-neoliberalism diplomacy and protection of multinational interests, is a strong ally for the Bolivian players who seek economic privatization. These factors help explain why these leaders are so confident in their technically illegal, nationally unpopular, and ethically questionable push for separation from the central government.

Evo, on the other hand, is even less likely to compromise. And from his perspective, why should he? He had the legitimacy of the constitution (whose legitimacy has been tarnished by both sides, it is true) at his back. He has a solid democratic majority that is politically active and mobile. He has control of the national police and the Armed Forces of Bolivia. He has strong allies throughout Latin America (where only US-supported Peru and Colombia lack left-leaning reformist leaders). And most importantly, he has the pride and responsibility of being Latin America´s first indigenous president. He stands for so much in the eyes of his supporters that any compromise is a let down. These people are looking for rectification of centuries of injustice, and that is as strong of a political motivation as exists anywhere.

So, we shall see how this political drama unfolds in the next few days. How much is likely to change with the vote results, as I have gathered from conversations of all type, is completely unclear. One month from now, Bolivian politics may be entirely different. A year from now, the situation might be basically the same. The only certainty is that this country is at a boiling point, and almost everyone is hoping that it does not boil over. I will be back with the results of the vote, and a concluding summary, although the international press will probably take enough interest to at least publish the numbers. I have less than a week remaining in Bolivia, and it is sure to be interesting.